So far through this year I’ve been pretty proud of what I’ve been living up to. With my birthday in November, it’s pretty cool to turn a year older and then prepare myself for the next upcoming year. I finally turned 23 on the 15th, and I think I did really well for 2021 in all the months leading up to this one. For all of the year I kept a consistency writing on this blog (as well as on my other blogs), posting enough every month. I loved the photoshoots I did this year a lot, I think I did plenty through the spring time too, and this year was just a good requiem for me after the last couple of years. A lot of this year to me was about sobriety, which I’ve written about, and that really shaped me after a while. Once I hit the middle of the year, I finally got to a point where I was really loving my photoshoots every month, those were some of my favorites! I was just really proud of how they kept turning out. Hopefully next year I start getting into it more and posting more, but I’m making good progress as I go either way so I know I’ll be doing something good. I’m excited about my life even though it’s a lot of the same things sometimes these days, but I have this rhythm and I always really see where I’m going with it. I have this good attitude to me too and this persistence that I want to remind myself of, with my writing and creative flow. Sometimes I don’t really have that much to say I think, but when I’m even just writing in my journals and things a lot comes out that I couldn’t explain much until I started writing, but it makes so much sense. A lot of what’s inside of me I think is accessible when I point myself towards the right ideas, which I sometimes can’t express until I’m finally writing. Sometimes I start writing and it ends up sounding like I’m solving a problem as I go, and it ends up making so much sense when I get through it. One thing I’ve noticed that I’ve been leading up to the past couple of months is this energy in me that I keep wanting to express, and it’s interesting to see that evolve with me a bit the more I recognize it. That’s what I’ve been finding more and more in myself these days. So that’s a lot about me I’m finding in myself more as I go recently, but I had a pretty great birthday this time as well! I got to go shopping with my boyfriend one day and my mom another day, and I got new clothes to shoot and a couple jewelry pieces I’ll be posting about eventually too. I’m pretty excited about it, I’ve always wanted camouflage pants like this! It’ll be good to see how that goes, I still have so many outfit ideas for the next year. I really see myself these days and I know I have so much to put into my passions and things more & more, and I know I can just keep going and doing these things that I love. November was pretty good to me, and I know December will be one more post to wrap up the year, and I’m excited to see how that goes!

For the shopping trip & what I got from it, I went to Charlotte Russe with my boyfriend on the day of my birthday, because I just knew they’d be a good general store for fashion. I usually shop online but I really liked getting to pick things out that day, I really actually liked a lot of their clothes and how they ended up fitting on me. I ended up also getting this different black tie-back crop top that looks pretty good with these pants as well, but I already wore that as an outfit the day after I got them, so I picked this similar black tie shirt for the photoshoot! They’re totally different enough of shirts too, by the way, but I’ll eventually also get that other shirt in a shoot sometime. I have plenty of options of what I can do with that top, so that’ll be cool. Matt bought me both of those pieces, as well as a pair of jeans that fit me really well! Then he got me two significant necklaces during the same trip, both from different stores. One of them was this heart lock necklace like I’d been asking him to get me, which goes really well with my ‘key’ (and sometimes lock) jewelry piece items I have going on. I had always wanted a heart lock necklace from him specifically, and I’m glad we found one at Macy’s! You’ll see me blog about that a couple times at least within the next year I’m thinking. The last thing he got me was this really rad double snake necklace that is all crystalized, dangling from a knot, and it’s in this photoshoot. We got it from some small store at the mall but it is perfect for me, I really adore snakes and this necklace is rad. Let’s get into the photoshoot.

This outfit I think is perfect for my first shoot of being 23. I think the pants are a good key piece to have done this with, I’m glad I finally got pants like this. There’s so much ahead of me, like I know I have these good ideas for shoots and outfits to do in the future, and I hope I get a bunch of good ones done for my year of 23. I’ve just had so many ideas but as much as I go I can’t accomplish everything at once, I take it like one month at a time and see what I’ve got done. I think it’s crazy how much can change in a year though, with the past year being this obstacle course that I was thriving through as I went, trying to grasp everything I could as I went, doing all these shoots that I’ve done to show for something with my passion. There’s so much life to live, even if it’s a lot of the same steps, but I think certain things will always pop-out for me on the road as I’m thriving to signify these stepping-stones & milestones that I notice and progress with. There’s so much I appreciate about what I do, and even if it’s not every second I really just know what I love, and I find ways to use that creative energy as much as I can. Sometimes it’s even simply me waking up in the morning and thinking it’s time to do a photoshoot, and then taking that leap to put something together and it works out well. It can just be the best thing I’ve put together in a while, which happens to me sometimes, and I just love how that turns out. Other days I might wake up just to make it to a meeting that night, so I took my time to get ready all day, but it’s all these perfect in-between outfits that happen that make me really appreciate my way of putting one together. It’s different when I’m doing a shoot because it’s more specific, but I usually know generally where I’m going with it. Sometimes I just have these clashy crazy outfits, which is better than something too simple, and it just reminds me of my growth in the last 2-3 years and I just really see how that happens.

In this photoshoot, I ended up wearing my Kylie Cosmetics lip kit in Ginger. I like the reddish tone against my hair and also the green on the bottom as well. I also have this fun thing about my lipsticks, I finally started wearing them pretty much every day again this year, so I was able to wear all of my lip products at least once this year! I just love that because I kept going so many days without wearing lipstick in the past few years, but I finally cycled through pretty much all of them except for like 3, and I have a month to wear those three lipsticks. Plus there’s some lipsticks I have in a box, but I have a bunch of lipstick. I have this entire acrylic drawer of Kylie lipsticks and I’m so glad I finally wore Ginger. I really love using my makeup, I just have so much of it that is years old that I forgot to use for some reason. I went through a crazy lot since 2018, so a bunch has changed for me but doing my makeup all the time was a pretty good part of the last half a year! So many days I went to meetings dressed up in something cool, wearing lipstick. I’m using everything I have as often as I can so I feel pretty good about that! Just little things like that to appreciate, I love getting to utilize all these things that I have. I even have had weird things happen to me like 4-5 of my lipsticks I for some reason lost, and I have no idea where they would’ve been but seems like they’re gone. That sucked, finding that out, because I thought for sure I had them stored for almost a year before I saw that I lost them. Little weird things like that happen to me sometimes, but I really love everything I still have with all my heart and I know I don’t need anything else for a while. I so don’t need to buy more makeup for a while, that’s something I’m sure of! So for now I just love everything I have and I use all of it, which is more than enough to me nowadays!

My ADIDAS sneakers I chose to pair with this outfit, especially because I haven’t ever put them in a shoot before. I had a good idea for a shoot next year that might include these sneakers, but I thought they went well with this outfit, too for now! I have a bunch of different outfit ideas queued up to get to eventually, but I did pretty good with my different looks this year, they all included different shoes. I thought that was an awesome trend there, that I didn’t repeat the same shoes once in a photoshoot this year! Similar to the lipstick thing, this was just a cool thing I noticed about my consistencies and different mini goals within this year to use everything I have neatly. I still have a ton of shoes I eventually need to do a shoot for and/or get rid of, but I’ll get to that within the next couple of years! I just have a bunch of pairs of shoes I’ve been accumulating since I was like 15 or so. More than half of them are probably heels for some reason, but I wore a lot of heels growing up from that age, it was surprising. That’s a big part of my style history, although it’ll be fun to see what more I can get out of my closet before I really do get rid of a lot of my impractical pairs of shoes. My mom just used to give me shoes all the time, heels of sorts. Clothes are different, I get rid of clothes more in a cycled fashion because I always could use some room in my closet. With my shoe racks, I have a certain amount of spaces, and they’re filled. So I’m not going to buy new shoes anytime soon but if I got rid of any too soon I’d just have a ton of empty spots in my closet, that I wouldn’t be filling. So that’s interesting, but my closet looks great at least! It’ll be cool to go down the list and do some more shoots with my more esoteric pairs of shoes. I love my sneakers as well of course though, I have enough pairs of them, and these ones I want to wear more often maybe now too!

Pretty much most of my time is free time other than meetings, but I’m getting better with coping with everything I think. I used to be pretty anxious throughout my days wanting to get out of the house, but doing my outpatient treatment saved me from that for a good few months actually! Nowadays though, I think time passes by way easier, and even though I need to spend more of my time and energy on my creative outlets, I still find ways to pass time a lot better than I used to. I really appreciate that about my life these days, especially because I barely had anything to share in meetings for a while. That didn’t worry me exactly, although I wish it was a little easier to write, but that’s why I waited until the end of the month this time. I see why there was just this time that unfolded where I have all this creative energy that I spend more time channeling and everything rather than expressing as often as I could’ve, but I needed a break! It was like relaxing to not have to worry about as much around me, taking time to work it out in my mind a little more. I can make that positive as heck, because I loved that little break, but I love posting every month it’s just necessary as an outlet! So I love writing and I want to do it well, so even if I felt like I didn’t always have something to say, maybe taking that time to focus on myself internally more isn’t always an instant satisfaction, but an overall way to cope with the tasks at hand…even if I felt withdrawn in a couple ways. I guess my point is that it’s actually great, where I’m at in life, but I can’t wait to see what all that was for! I just didn’t have the time, really, to blog until the end of the month, but a lot of that was just me time that I took and I really think it makes me think. It means something to me a little more to be able to pass time like I’m getting better with these days, because I’ve been practicing this. Free time used to bug me because I would run out of things to do so it was too idle. I really see myself though, like I always say, and I’m glad I wrote this paragraph. It actually really explained most of that to me a little better, so that’s awesome!

This year is totally almost over but I really appreciate a lot of the photoshoots and blog posts from throughout it. There’s little pieces here and there, certain pictures (or collages) or sentences (and paragraphs) that I was really proud of as I went through the year, and I hope I recognize those enough because I really love how so much of it turned out. A bunch of great things have happened this year, but it’s also almost an entire year sober from when I quit using drugs daily, so I have really seen so many changes in myself over that period of time. I’ve found weird habits in myself with noticing certain things closely, because there’s not much else to do! Or I just really see the difference in speaking spiritually and articulating myself more in writing, and that is an interesting energy. I have so much more time where I’m supposed to be sober coming up this next year, for outpatient treatment, so I think it’ll be very interesting to see myself evolve more from here and find something more in me that I can express creatively and use to write or photoshoot some ideas from there.

There’s always something more that can break the old cycles, just to show you something more about yourself that you could learn, potentially by thinking enough to yourself without just getting stuck in the cycles, or by finding anything outside of yourself that could teach you. People can get to know themselves pretty well actually, I’m pretty good at that, while I’m trying to figure something out in myself. I have made enough progress over the past few months, I’m really glad I came out of a lot of it, and now sometimes I just feel like my progress is heading in a different direction and I just still learn about myself through different things. I’m really glad I appreciate so many things like that, somethings to think about! This little paragraph sounds similar to my blog worryjustenough, but I included it at the tail end of here just because it’s something I wanted to write about right then. I’m glad about all that I’ve learned lately, in the last couple of months or so, because I really feel like I can notice things easier in myself and problem solve a little easier. I’m also glad about this photoshoot and I can’t wait to do another one, there might be some surprise in the next blog post! Hopefully that works out, but for now I’ll keep persisting in my life and being grateful for what I can whenever. Thanks so much for reading, we’ll see how the rest of this year goes!